Doug Casey's Top Five Reasons Not to Vote

L: Doug, we've
spoken about presidents. We have a presidential election coming up in
the US - an election that could have significant consequences on our investments.
But given the views you've already expressed on the Tea
Party movement and anarchy,
I'm sure you have different ideas. What do you make of the impending circus,
and what should a rational man do?

Doug: Well, a rational man, which is to say, an ethical man, would
almost certainly not vote in this election, or in any other - at least above
a local level, where you personally know most of both your neighbors and the
candidates.

L: Why? Might not an ethical person want to vote the bums out?

Doug: He might feel that way, but he'd better get his emotions under
control. I've thought about this. So let me give you at least five reasons
why no one should vote.

The first reason is that voting is an unethical act, in and of itself.
That's because the state is pure, institutionalized coercion. If you believe
that coercion is an improper way for people to relate to one another, then
you shouldn't engage in a process that formalizes and guarantees the use of
coercion.

L: It's probably worth defining coercion in this context. I know you
agree with me that force is ethical in self-defense. A murderer I shoot might
feel coerced into accepting a certain amount of hot lead that he did not consent
to, but he intended the same, or worse, for me, so the scales are balanced.
What you are talking about is forcing innocent, non-consenting others
to do things against their wills, like paying taxes that go to pay for military
adventures they believe are wrong, etc.

Doug: Right. The modern state not only routinely coerces people into
doing all sorts of things they don't want to do - often very clearly against
their own interests - but it necessarily does so, by its nature. People who
want to know more about that should read our conversation
on anarchy. This distinction is very important in a society with a government
that is no longer limited by a constitution that restrains it from violating
individual rights. And when you vote, you participate in, and endorse,
this unethical system.

L: It's probably also worth clarifying that you're not talking about
all voting here. When you are a member of a golfing club and vote on how to
use the fees, you and everyone else have consented to the process, so it's
not unethical. It's participating in the management of the coercive machinery
of the state you object to, not voting in and of itself.

Doug: Exactly. As Mao correctly said, "The power of the State comes
out of the barrel of a gun." It's not like voting for the leadership of a social
club. Unlike a golfing club or something of that nature, the state won't let
you opt out.

L: Even if you're not harming anyone and just want to be left alone.

Doug: Which relates to the second reason: privacy. It compromises
your privacy to vote. It gets your name added to a list government busybodies
can make use of, like court clerks putting together lists of conscripts for
jury duty. Unfortunately, this is not as important a reason as it used to be,
because of the great proliferation of lists people are on anyway. Still, while
it's true there's less privacy in our world today, in general, the less any
government knows about you, the better off you are. This is, of course, why
I've successfully refused to complete a census form for the last 40 years.

Doug: It's wise to be a nonperson, as far as the state is concerned,
as far as possible.

L: Not to digress too much, but some people might react by saying that
juries are important.

Doug: They are, but it would be a waste of my time to sign up for jury
duty, because I would certainly be kicked off any jury. No attorney would ever
let me stay on the jury once we got to voir dire, because I would not
agree to being a robot that simply voted on the facts and the law as instructed
by the judge - I'd want to vote on the morality
of the law in question too. I'd be interested in justice, and very few
laws today, except for the basic ones on things like murder and theft, have
anything to do with justice. If the case related to drug laws, or tax laws,
I would almost certainly automatically vote to acquit, regardless of the facts
of the case.

L: I've thought about it too, because it is important, and I might
be willing to serve on a jury. And of course I'd vote my conscience too. But
I'd want to be asked, not ordered to do it. I'm not a slave.

Doug: My feelings exactly.

L: But we should probably get to your third reason for not voting.

Doug: That would be because it's a degrading experience. The reason
I say that is because registering to vote, and voting itself, usually involves
taking productive time out of your day to go stand around in lines in government
offices. You have to fill out forms and deal with petty bureaucrats. I know
I can find much more enjoyable and productive things to do with my time, and
I'm sure anyone reading this can as well.

L: And the pettier the bureaucrat, the more unpleasant the interaction
tends to be.

Doug: I have increasing evidence of that every time I fly. The TSA goons
are really coming into their own now, as our own home-grown Gestapo wannabes.

L: It's a sad thing. Reason number four?

Doug: As P.J. O'Rourke says in a
recent book, and as I've always said, voting just encourages them.

I'm convinced that most people don't vote for candidates they believe in,
but against candidates they fear. But that's not how the guy who wins sees
it; the more votes he gets, the more he thinks he's got a mandate to rule -
even if all his votes are really just votes against his opponent. Some people
justify this, saying it minimizes harm to vote for the lesser of two evils.
That's nonsense, because it still leaves you voting for evil. The lesser of
two evils is still evil.

Incidentally, I got as far as this point in 1980, when I was on the Phil Donahue
show. I had the whole hour on national TV all to myself, and I felt in top
form. It was actually the day before the national election, when Jimmy Carter
was the incumbent, running against Ronald Reagan. After I made some economic
observations, Donahue accused me of intending to vote for Reagan. I said that
I was not, and as sharp as Donahue was, he said, "Well, you're not voting for
Carter, so you must be voting Libertarian."

I said no, and had to explain why not. I believed then just as I do now. And
it was at about this point when the audience, which had been getting restive,
started getting really upset with me. I never made it to point five.

Perhaps I shouldn't have been surprised. That same audience, when I pointed
out that their taxes were high and were being wasted, contained an individual
who asked, "Why do we have to pay for things with our taxes? Why doesn't the
government pay for it?" I swear that's what he said; it's on tape. If you could
go back and watch the show, you'd see that the audience clapped after that
brilliant question. Which was when I first realized that while the situation
is actually hopeless, it's also quite comic.

L: [Laughs]

Doug: And things have only gotten worse since then, with decades more public
education behind us.

L: I bet that guy works in the Obama administration now, where they
seem to think exactly as he did; the government will just pay for everything
everyone wants with money it doesn't have.

Doug: [Chuckles] Maybe so. He'd now be of an age where he's collecting
Social Security and Medicare, plus food stamps, and likely gaming the system
for a bunch of other freebies. Maybe he's so discontent with his miserable
life that he goes to both Tea Party and Green Party rallies to kill time. I
do believe we're getting close to the endgame. The system is on the verge of falling
apart. And the closer we get to the edge, the more catastrophic the collapse
it appears we're going to have.

Which leads me to point number five: Your vote doesn't count. If I'd
gotten to say that to the Donahue audience, they probably would have stoned
me. People really like to believe that their individual votes count. Politicians
like to say that every vote counts, because it gets everyone into busybody
mode, makes voters complicit in their crimes. But statistically, any person's
vote makes no more difference than a single grain of sand on a beach. Thinking
their vote counts seems to give people who need it an inflated sense of self-worth.

That's completely apart from the fact - as voters in Chicago in 1960 and Florida
in 2000 can tell you - when it actually does get close, things can be, and
often are, rigged. As Stalin famously said, it's not who votes that counts,
it's who counts the votes.

Anyway, officials manifestly do what they want, not what you want them to
do, once they are in office. They neither know, nor care, what you want. You're
just another mark, a mooch, a source of funds.

L: The idea of political representation is a myth, and a logical absurdity.
One person can only represent his own opinions - if he's even thought them
out. If someone dedicated his life to studying another person, he might be
able to represent that individual reasonably accurately. But given that no
two people are completely - or even mostly - alike, it's completely impossible
to represent the interests of any group of people.

Doug: The whole constellation of concepts is ridiculous. This leads
us to the subject of democracy. People say that if you live in a democracy,
you should vote. But that begs the question of whether democracy itself is
any good. And I would say that, no, it's not. Especially a democracy unconstrained
by a constitution. That, sadly, is the case in the US, where the Constitution
is 100% a dead letter. Democracy is nothing more than mob rule dressed up in
a suit and tie. It's no way for a civilized society to be run. At this point,
it's a democracy consisting of two wolves and a sheep, voting about what to
eat for dinner.

L: Okay, but in our firmly United State of America today, we don't
live in your ideal society. It is what it is, and if you don't vote the bums
out, they remain in office. What do you say to the people who say that if you
don't vote, if you don't raise a hand, then you have no right to complain about
the results of the political process?

Doug: But I do raise a hand, constantly. I try to change things by
influencing the way people think. I'd just rather not waste my time or degrade
myself on unethical and futile efforts like voting. Anyway, that argument is
more than fallacious, it's ridiculous and spurious. Actually, only the non-voter
does have a right to complain - it's the opposite of what they say. Voters
are assenting to whatever the government does; a nonvoter can best be compared
to someone who refuses to join a mob. Only he really has the right to complain
about what they do.

L: Okay then, if the ethical man shouldn't vote in the national elections
coming up, what should he do?

Doug: I think it's like they said during the war with Viet Nam: Suppose
they gave a war, and nobody came? I also like to say: Suppose they levied a
tax, and nobody paid? And at this time of year: Suppose they gave an election,
and nobody voted?

The only way to truly delegitimize a corrupt system is by not voting. When
tin-plated dictators around the world have their rigged elections, and people
stay home in droves, even today's "we love governments of all sorts" international
community won't recognize the results of the election.

L: Delegitimizing evil. and without coercion, or even force. That's
a beautiful thing, Doug. I'd love to see the whole crooked, festering, parasitical
mass in Washington - and similar places - get a total vote of no-confidence.

Doug: Indeed. Now, I realize that my not voting won't make that happen.
My not voting doesn't matter any more than some naive person's voting does.
But at least I'll know that what I did was ethical. You have to live with yourself.
That's only possible if you try to do the right thing.

L: At least you won't have blood on your hands.

Doug: That's exactly the point.

L: A friendly amendment: you do staunchly support voting with your
feet.

Doug: Ah, that's true. Unfortunately, the idea of the state has spread
over the face of the earth like an ugly skin disease. All of the governments
of the world are, at this point, growing in extent and power - and rights violations
- like cancers. But still, that is one way I am dealing with the problem; I'm
voting with my feet. When the going gets tough, the tough get going. It's idiotic
to sit around like a peasant and wait to see what they do to you.

To me, it makes much more sense to live as a perpetual tourist, staying no
more than six months of the year in any one place. Tourists are courted and
valued, whereas residents and citizens are viewed as milk cows. And before
this crisis is over, they may wind up looking more like beef cows. Entirely
apart from that, it keeps you from getting into the habit of thinking like
a medieval serf. And I like being warm in the winter, and cool in the summer.

L: And, as people say: "What if everyone did that?" Well, you'd see
people migrating towards the least predatory states where they could enjoy
the most freedom, and create the most wealth for themselves and their posterity.
That sort of voting with your feet could force governments to compete for citizens,
which would lead to more places where people can live as they want. It could
become a worldwide revolution fought and won without guns.

Doug: That sounds pretty idealistic, but I do believe this whole sick
notion of the nation-state will come to an end within the next couple generations.
It makes me empathize with Lenin when he said, "The worse it gets, the better
it gets." Between jet travel, the Internet, and the bankruptcy of governments
around the world, the nation-state is a dead duck. As we've discussed before,
people will organize into voluntary communities we call phyles.

L: That's the name given to such communities by science fiction author
Neal Stephenson in his book The Diamond Age, which we discussed in our
conversation on Speculator's
Fiction. Well, we've talked quite a bit - what about investment implications?

Doug: First, don't expect anything that results from this US
election to do any real, lasting good. And if, by some miracle, it did, the
short-term implications would be very hard economic times. What to do in either
case is what we write about in our big-picture newsletter, The
Casey Report.

More important, however, is to have a healthy and useful psychological attitude.
For that, you need to stop thinking politically, stop wasting time on elections,
entitlements, and such nonsense. You've got to use all of your time and brain
power to think economically. That's to say, thinking about how to allocate
your various intellectual, personal, and capital assets, to survive the storm
- and even thrive, if you play your cards right.

L: Very good. I like that: think economically, not politically. Thanks,
Doug!

Doug: My pleasure.

Irrespective of whether one agrees with Doug's politics, his
investing record speaks for itself. And just like him, the analysts and editors
at Casey Research dig deep in their respective fields and are blunt in their
assessments. One thing many agree that the US will have to face, no matter
the outcome of the presidential election, is its growing
debt crisis.

Louis James' background in physics, economics, and technical writing prepared
him well for his role as senior editor of the International Speculator and
Casey Investment Alert. Like Doug Casey, Louis constantly travels the world,
visiting highly prospective geological targets, grilling management and company
geologists, and interviewing natives in a variety of languages to find out
what they really think (he's fluent in French and Spanish, and speaks a little
German and Russian).

Whether it's days of back-to-back meetings with mining company executives
in Vancouver, pounding on rocks in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, examining
drill core in Argentina, or eating food with names he can't pronounce with
local miners in China, Louis is constantly looking for the next double-your-money
winner.

He evaluates dozens of companies every month, conducts due diligence of only
the best, and then compares notes with Doug in order to bring only those most
likely to provide rapid high returns to our subscribers' attention. Louis also
reads all the press releases, financial statements, and an enormous quantity
of related information to keep track of all of our mineral companies and has
become something of a walking database on same.

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